Demba Ali Jawo, Former Minister of Communications
By D. A. Jawo
In spite of all the praises being heaped on President Adama Barrow during the ongoing “Meet the People’s Tour”, the farmers are certainly quite disappointed with the decision by the government to maintain last year’s price for groundnuts, despite him promising them at the beginning of the tour that he had a pleasant surprise for them with regards to the price. Therefore, the subsequent announcement that the government was maintaining last year’s price was quite a big let-down for the farmers as they were no doubt quite hopeful that the price would be at least raised to mitigate the high inflation rate and galloping commodity prices. And yet, his government is set to increase the basic salary of public service workers to 30 percent when the farmers seem to bear a much bigger financial burden.
We all heard at the beginning of the tour when President Barrow promised that when his computer got heated, he was going to make pleasant announcements to the farmers, including giving them good news about the groundnut prices, but it appears that his computer instead got over-heated leading to the RAM being damaged, hence the failure to deliver the good news that he had promised. He instead had to revert to last year’s price, to the utter disappointment of all those who were expecting an increase.
The incoherent messages from President Barrow seem to indicate that he embarked on the ritualistic tour without being adequately prepared, otherwise, it is hard to imagine that he would begin the tour without his government discussing and agreeing on this year’s groundnut price, knowing fully well that it was the most important piece of information that the farmers would look forward to from him.
Obviously, President Barrow’s attempt to justify maintaining last year’s price was far from convincing, especially considering several factors, including the rate of inflation as well as the fact that the exchange rate of the Dalasi against the US Dollar and other foreign currencies is almost double since last year, thus resulting to the drastic increase in prices of essential commodities and services, making last year’s price look like pittance. It means therefore that the amount being paid to the farmers this year would fetch them almost half of the value of what they were able to get from last year’s price. Therefore, the decision to maintain the price certainly does not make much sense and quite unfair as well, especially considering the fact that the tour alone may cost the tax payers more than D30 million. This is in addition to the loss of several man hours for the numerous public service workers on the unnecessarily large delegation as well as the wear and tear of the hundreds of government vehicles mobilized for the tour, which of course include some of the most expensive vehicles that were purchased for over a billion Dalasis for the mere two-day OIC Summit, which amount could have been used to augment the price of the groundnuts.
Similarly, with the appreciation of the CFA franc against the Dalasi, it would be hard to see what the authorities could do to prevent the Gambian farmers from selling their produce across the border, if the government maintains last year’s price. Therefore, let us hope that commonsense would eventually prevail and they would raise the price to an acceptable level.
Another promise that President Barrow has made to the farmers during the tour, with his usual bragging and chest beating, is that they would get paid on the spot whenever they sell their groundnuts; exactly what he promised them last year as well as the previous years, but which his government had never been able to enforce. Sometimes it took several months after the sale of their groundnuts before the farmers got paid. Is it going to be different this time around? let us wait and see.